Portfolio Website - Am I hireable?

[hwangs12]

Hello,

I am at my 4 months mark since I started coding and wanted to get honest feedback on the portfolio that I have built to get some reality check.

The following is my website and feel free to comment or critique in every angle possible.

https://hwangs12.github.io/welcome/

Thank you,

[jwilkins.oboe]

Hi @hwangs12 !

I moved your post over to the #career section since you wanted to ask if you were hirable.

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I think you have done a lot of work so far in a short amount of time.
You should be proud of that.

I am also building a portfolio for jobs and I will tell you what a mentor told me .

She said, “A lot of portfolios look the same. Your job is to stand out.”

I was really grateful for that advice

I think building class projects is a good first step when you are first learning.
But when you are thinking about jobs, you can increase your chances of standing out from the crowd if your portfolio has some unique projects that everyone hasn’t seen before.

Take those skills you learned in those youtube and udemy projects and build something different.

Keep learning and building!

Sidenote: I was curious what the difference between the bugs and projects category was. Aren’t they all considered projects?

[lasjorg]

I would say it’s fairly unlikely to get hired with only 4 months of experience.

I would suggest for hiring purposes you should have at least one full-stack app with all the bells and whistles (Backend, Auth, client-side routing, using a framework like React, TypeScript for extra brownie points, etc.) on your portfolio. It would also be nice to see some more commits to repos other than your own (to show more Git/GitHub workflow knowledge).

Besides, you might find yourself biting off more than you can chew if you were to get hired now. It really depends though, there are places that have the time and resources to take in beginners and see it as a long-term investment. But I would imagine you either get that type of job through contacts or showing some potential beyond the run-of-the-mill stuff.

[kevinSmith]

“hireable” is very subjective and is a different topic. Everyone is “hireable” on some level or another. Looking at the work you’ve done, you’re getting close to where you start to enter that territory. I think you need at least a few large scale projects, preferably with a backend. All I see is a few standard projects (like TTT and MP) that a million other people will have, a todo list, and an app that implements the Particle library. I would want to see an app or two of grander scope and an original idea. (It doesn’t have to be a great idea, just not the standard cookie cutter apps that we do when we are learning.)

I am also a little flustered with your portfolio. Some observations:

1. Don’t make it a puzzle to find your info. If I’m a hiring manager, and I have 127 other portfolios to look at, I am looking for an excuse to skip any. I have to hit a button to enter, then guess that I have to press those headings to get a list, that I have to guess that I have to press them. The job of the portfolio isn’t to show off, it’s to use the 5 seconds of attention you have from the hirer before they skip you to convince them that you have the skills for the job.
2. “Me” should be text about you, not a resume. That should be labeled “resume”.
3. CodePen should not (imho) be on a portfolio. It is a fine learner tool and it is sometime a cool tool to try things out, but is not where professional development happens.
4. What the heck is “Bugs”?
5. It’s too much work to find the project code for each project. Those should be linked somehow to the source code and the working app. The first thing they’re going to want to see after seeing the app is the source code. You’ve given them a scavenger hunt.

[bbsmooth]

I don’t mean to be too critical here, but the opening splash page on your portfolio seems to serve no purpose and the change to “Click Me” on mouseover looks fairly amateurish, IMHO. I would lose it completely.

[hwangs12]

Hello!
Thank you for the encouragement and moving the section over to the one that fits!
As an answer to why there is ‘bugs’ category, I wanted to distinguish ones that show some errors when you play it and have not been fixed yet. Having said that, I guess I will give a rather clear column name as people keep asking what the bugs are.
Thanks for your feedback

[hwangs12]

Noted that I should make a full-stack app and make commits to repos other than mine, which were hovering in my head like a plan but I didn’t give it a go yet. Thank you for the advice!

[jwilkins.oboe]

@hwangs12

As an answer to why there is ‘bugs’ category, I wanted to distinguish ones that show some errors when you play it and have not been fixed yet.

I don’t know if it is a good idea to tell perspective employers, “I know there are bugs in my code but I will get around to them later”

You want to try your best to showcase your best work.
Of course it won’t be perfect but you don’t want to go into it knowing there are noticeable issues.

[lasjorg]

I agree, maybe call them WIP (work in progress). Or just have them on your GitHub and don’t link to unfinished apps on the portfolio.

[kevinSmith]

@hwangs12

As an answer to why there is ‘bugs’ category, I wanted to distinguish ones that show some errors when you play it and have not been fixed yet.

I would not want to include them. I would be worried that the hirer would infer from that that you don’t follow through on things, that “half done is good enough”. Just include things that are complete. Every wanna be developer has half-done projects. They want people that finish things, that get all the details right. I’d rather see a mediocre project that is completed than a great idea that never got finished.

[MissG]

Hello,

I find the rather minimalist design refreshing. Maybe you could skip the the “click me” feature, I wouldn’t say it looks amateurish - depends on your target audience. Apart from that, clicking on “contact” doesn’t lead anywhere and publishing your resume only as a pdf is, in my eyes, not ideal.

[kevinSmith]

@Anon551122

The Markdown Previewer is your only full-stack project,

I think that is just front end.

[kevinSmith]

@hwangs12

Now that I’ve looked at the code for the Markdown Previewer…

You may want to do some code reviews on these. For example:

  useEffect(() => {
    document.getElementById('preview').innerHTML = marked(text, {gfm: true,breaks: true});
  })

would be a warning flag for me if I were on the interview committee.

1. It’s doing direct DOM manipulations, a big no-no in React. Except inside ReactDOM.render, you should not be querying or manipulating the DOM - you let React do that.
2. It doesn’t specify a list of dependencies. I now see that you probably did this so it would run on every render. Still, that’s ugly.

I would have some people go through your code and give some feedback. The “just get it done” attitude of an assignment is not the same as the “putting my best food forward” attitude you should have with your portfolio. I know it’s impossible to get things perfect (there’s always something else…) but you should be trying to tighten these things up.

And run your code through formatters and linters and code smellers and validators - whatever. Just get it as pretty as possible. It’s hard to get that first job - don’t make it harder.

[gerardcsaperas]

Hey hwangs12! Good morning,

Nope, you are not ready, but you’re on the good track.

• Keep going with FreeCodeCamp’s certifications. At least finish the first 6 ones.
• Then, once you realize you know nothing about back end and you just passed the projects out of hammering code, get this course on Udemy (unsponsored).
• If you have a hard time with JavaScript in general, this is the best course you have (also unsponsored). You can complement the course with FreeCodeCamp.

Good luck! Keep pushing!

Gerard

[hwangs12]

Thank you all for your thoroughness and honesty on my portfolio website.
I have added some features that you guys have mentioned in my portfolio website and they will keep being implemented.
Additionally, i will definitely take the cover page down as it doesn’t seem to serve front-end design skill.
Lastly, let me know if you have any collab opportunities. Please msg me I’d be happy to contribute or make project together as a group.
Have a nice day

[lasjorg]

Speaking of the Markdown Previewer project. If you are going to link to fCC projects with the test script you want to make sure they are passing all the tests. Otherwise, what’s the point.

Instead, if you want to make changes that will break the tests you can just create a new version without the test script that is not meant as an fCC project. You also might consider creating a section just for fCC projects so it’s clear what they are.

[farfox]

So this all seems to be really detailed and thorough advice which leads me to a question. The websites you showed are all modern, minimalistic, and still sleek and easy to use. I’ve seen a lot of modern websites, even extremely popular ones, that are so difficult to use. I have to wonder if developers choose flashiness over functionality. Do you ever deal with that situation?